Still I Rise
by nooziewoozie
Summary: #26 -- color: She sits huddled in on herself, looking washed out in grays and purples in the colorless predawn light. Primarily NejiHina.
1. murmur

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #50: murmur  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hanabi, Hinata, Hisashi  
**Rating:** Hm. Leave it at K for now.  
**Notes:** I've started a prompt list. I've got the first few written, and they happen to occur in an AU universe in which there are no ninjas, but modern life and colleges and jobs and such. (To tell you the truth, I only did this so I could envision Neji as my O-chem lab TA. Seriously. I'm a sad person.) I can't say how many will revolve around the Hyuuga (and primarily NejiHina), but given that I find them fascinating, I've decided that this will be the official dumping ground for Hyuuga-centric drabbles/fics/what-have-you that grow out of this particular prompt list). In any case, enjoy and remember to review!

* * *

There are as many things that Hanabi hates about her sister as there are things that she loves.

She loves when her sister brushes her hair, soft and gentle and infinitely patient. She loves when her sister bakes her cheesecake brownies when Hanabi is down, and when she'll go watch horror movies with Hanabi even though Hinata absolutely hates them. She loves how Hinata explains the intricacies of Hanabi's math homework, and how she will stay up late into the night gluing and painting and drawing, just to make all of Hanabi's school projects perfect.

But she hates that Hinata's voice hardly ever rises above a genteel murmur and that she does nothing to alter the course their father plans out for her life. Hanabi is not so docile—she will kick and scream and slam doors until she gets her way, but Hinata will never, ever defy their father. She will always stand shock still before him, head bowed and eyes shadowed by a curtain of hair, hands laced together before her, a perfect picture of abject obedience.

Until one night when Hinata says, softy as always, but firmly, that she will not marry the man their father has picked out for her. Yes, she understands that the merger that will shortly follow her marriage will enable Hyuuga Enterprises to survive into the next decade, and, yes, she understands that she is not repaying the debt she owes to her father for generously allowing her to attain a BA at the local college, but, no, she cannot and will not marry Uchiha Sasuke.

Their father goes silent then. Even Hanabi, spying though the keyhole as she is, feels a chill run down her back. Their father's silences are sharp like swords and his anger is even more deadly.

But Hanabi knows why her sister is refusing, or at least, she thinks she knows why. She pictures the slim folder filled with resumes and letters of recommendation tucked under her sister's mattress, a secret wish made in the dead of night. She remembers the shock she felt, the sense of utter betrayal: _Hinata will leave me._ Not because their father will push her out the door and into a stranger's care, but because Hinata, herself, will want to leave, to pursue things that have nothing to do with Hanabi, where Hanabi will be nothing but a fading memory.

The ugly sound of flesh hitting flash sounds through their father's study. His hand is outstretched, and Hinata's face is turned sharply away from him. Hanabi's gut clenches.

Later on that night, when Hinata's face is drawn and there are the beginnings of an ugly bruise on her left cheek and she is packing with the single-mindedness of the desperate, Hanabi retrieves the folder from underneath the mattress and places it in the suitcase.

Hinata looks up, surprise warring with despair on her face.

"If you're leaving," Hanabi says, proud that her voice did not break and with a shrug that looks careless, "you might as well make it worth your while."

Hinata does not say anything, but it breaks Hanabi's heart that her sister's face is crumpling in on itself. She cannot stay here, not in this house with its oppressive silences. Hanabi is strong, Hanabi is loud, and Hanabi can fight off the quiet with loud rock music and ripped jeans and dogged disobedience, but Hinata cannot. Hanabi stuffs her hands deep into the pockets of her favorite hoodie and balls them up so that her fingernails bite deep into her palms.

She will not cry, not yet, not until she sees to it that her sister is out and on her way.


	2. 2 am

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #1: 2 a.m.  
**Characters/Pairings:** Neji, Hinata  
**Rating:** Upped! T for this one. Language, Neji, language.  
**Notes:** Same universe as the "murmur". Also, these happen in Chicago because it is one of my hometowns and I love this city to death, suckish weather and all. Also, Neji is a grad student at the University of Chicago (program as of yet undecided, but I'm leaning towards Master's in physics or biochem) because he's masochistic enough to enjoy it. Enjoy!

* * *

It's 2 a.m. in the morning, and Hinata is standing outside her cousin's apartment building. The fierce Chicago wind cuts across her cheeks and through her flimsy pea coat but her hands are clamped too tightly around the handle of her suitcase to tremble. She's going to need steady hands, even if the rest of her is quivering.

She cannot stand out here forever. It is freezing and it is the south side of Chicago, and there is nothing left for her back home. She squints at the listing of names besides the doorbells in the dim light cast by the nearest streetlight. Neji's name is there, the third from the bottom. The sight of his sure, square handwriting gives her the final push she needs to disentangle her hand from the suitcase handle and push the button next to his name.

She waits. The seconds feel like years with nothing but the howling wind for company.

Finally, the intercom buzzes to life. "Lee," says Neji's voice, garbled by static, but it is wonderfully, amazingly, _Neji's_ voice, and her knees knock together and her throat closes. "I swear, if that's you and you're drunk, you can just stay down there and freeze to death."

There are words she needs to say, and quickly. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

"It's 2 fucking a.m. in the morning," Neji's voice says. "And if you don't say something _right now_, I'm—"

"N-Neji!" she exclaims, her voice finally returning. Her hands fly to the old brass intercom frantically, as though she could reach him through it. "N-Neji-nii-san, it's me."

The crackling stops for a moment. "Hinata-san?" He sounds surprised, but before she can say anything, the door buzzes. She yanks it open, but her suitcase is large and cumbersome and her hands are frozen, and she struggles to maneuver it through the narrow door. It keeps knocking into the side of the doorway and she's making an awful racket and it's so cold—

There are hurried footsteps behind her and there are hands on her shoulders and Neji is pulling her back into the narrow entranceway. He slips passed her and begins to wrestle with her suitcase in her stead. She gazes at his back while he works to slide the weighty bag over the threshold: he is as tall and as sleek as she remembers, his hair longer and falling in a glossy waterfall over his shoulders and back. She drinks the sight in, and, for the first time in many, many years, she leans against a wall and simply breathes.


	3. metaphor

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #2: metaphor  
**Characters/Pairings:** Neji, Hinata  
**Rating:** Um, this one would be K, I think.  
**Notes:** Same universe as "murmur" and "2 am". Neji's perspective on the evening.

* * *

Neji is not the sort of man who thinks in metaphors. He is not given to flights of fancy nor does he find passages of turgid purple prose appealing. Neji is instead a man of science, a man who thinks in blacks and whites and does not like to think of the indiscriminate grays in between.

So he is suitably unprepared when his cousin Hinata shows up one night, with a suitcase in hand and an ugly bruise purpling one cheek, begging for space on his couch.

"Only for a few nights," she says, in that quiet, meek way of hers, "only until I find some work and a place to live. I don't want to trouble you."

He gazes at her thoughtfully. She is frozen inside out, shoulders trembling and cheeks rubbed raw from the wind as she sits on his couch and curls her hands around a cup of hastily made tea. She is still so small; and even after all these years, her hands are still dainty and fingernails clean and neatly rounded.

He should ask her what drove her to him, what drove her out of the cavernous Hyuuga mansion, and what caused the bruise on her face, but he can guess, and he has a hunch that his guesses are right. He remembers his uncle very well: a stern stranger wearing his father's face, eyes hard and glassy when they should have been laughing, a mouth forever down-turned in displeasure. And he remembers even more his small cousin, fine-boned and delicate and forever clumsy, and forever the object of his uncle's disapproval.

Neji is not the sort of man who thinks in metaphors, but he can't help but imagine birds in flight and cage doors hanging listlessly from their hinges as he looks at her.

"You can stay," he says, "as long as you like."


	4. tragedy

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #41: tragedy  
**Characters/Pairings:** Neji, Hinata  
**Rating:** Solidly K.  
**Notes:** Same universe as "murmer", "metaphor" and "2 a.m.". Details what brought Hinata to breaking point. I've got about nine more of these written--this prompt thing is so exciting!

* * *

Hinata deals in silences. Her silences are soft and certain, whispering and fluttering, like the sound a butterfly's wings make as it alights on a flower: barely anything at all. Hinata has grown accustomed to this and she has grown resigned to the fact that, when she dies, the world will not remember her, because her fingerprint on her own life is a transient one at best and nonexistent at worst. Impacting another--truly, deeply connecting with another, soul deep—is a laughable notion.

She certainly is not stupid—she understands exactly what Hanabi always rages about—she needs to speak up; she needs to voice her thoughts; she cannot be silent forever. Hinata knows all of that, and knows it well. They are the words she mumbles to herself at night, staring hard into the darkness and willing strength into her voice.

She had not always been this way, not always been so silent that she could be a shadow. She keeps the bright shards of her childhood, their jagged edges dulled by time and wear and constant examination, close to the surface of her mind. She remembers the feel of Neji's hand in her even littler one, and the time that they had stolen cans of condensed milk from the kitchen and slurped them--sticky and delighted at their success--behind the boathouse; and when they had begged pieces of watermelon gum—to be gobbled up a pack at a time and so quickly that her jaw would hurt—from their older cousins; and when she would stumble and fall in the dirt, and Neji, who is only a year older than her but who had seemed to be infinitely wiser, would kneel and make that grown-up face--it would not scare her, because Neji is not scary when he made that face, not like her father is scary--and pat her on the head and tell her that she should not cry, it was only a fall, and that she is too strong of a girl to cry because of such a small thing.

She wonders what he would make of her life now, and if he would laugh at the farce, for it is too much of a stretch to even call it a 'life'. Perhaps 'puppet show' would be more apt, and perhaps the real tragedy of the thing is that, sometimes, she can even fool herself into believing that there is some comfort to be found in a father who plans her life for her as though she is nothing more than a marionette dancing on his fine silk strings. It is no longer her responsibility, so when she is old, she will not regret anything because the happenings of her life could not have been helped.

Except, she knows in her heart of hearts, that she does not want to be a doddering old woman who mutters meaningless platitudes to herself, who lies and says that she had no choice.

Her heart is pounding in her ears, sharp and staccato and terrified, but she stops biting the inside of her cheek and looks her father in the eyes for the first time in years. She will fight and fight and fight, because she hasn't been given that choice.

And she wants it.


	5. door

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #57: door  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** Same universe as "murmur", "2 am", "metaphor" and "tragedy".

* * *

Hinata has been lingering in doorways all her life.

She has spent years lingering around her father's doors—the doors to his study, the doors to his rooms, the doors to his heart. She hasn't managed to pry any of those open. She has lingered like a ghost, a wisp of smoke, a pale, bloodless thing, dancing clumsily every which way, salivating for his attention, his approval, his love, until she half-hated him, half-hated apologizing for her shy nature, for her lack of talent, her birth.

When Hanabi—loud, gutsy, turbulent Hanabi—effortlessly snatched his attention away, Hinata did not know how to feel: relieved, so that her child-shoulders do not carry the entire weight of his disapproving stare, or saddened, because any chance she had ever had of winning his approval is gone?

She thinks of those times, as she lays in bed in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar city, and ponders upon the inexorable power that parents wield over their children: how they have the power to create a child who is bold and loved and sure of her place in the world, or create one that is not any of those things, but instead scared of her own shadow. How many years of her life has she thrown away catering to her father's whims, and not hers? How many years has she spent biting the inside of her cheek until it bled to keep from crying because all that she is could never be enough to satisfy his demands?

Her children will not linger around her door, Hinata decides. They will bound in, free of all shadows of doubt and fear and will know without a doubt that they are loved.

She can thank her father for that certainty at least.


	6. color

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #26: color  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** Same universe as "murmur", "2 am", "metaphor" and "tragedy" and "door". The morning after.

* * *

Neji has always been an early riser, so he is surprised to encounter Hinata nestled on his couch when he ventures out of his room in pursuit of coffee before dawn. She sits huddled in on herself, looking washed out in grays and purples in the colorless predawn light.

Hinata has always been a laughably bad liar: when she says that, of course, she's slept well and the bed was incredibly comfortable and nothing is wrong, she's fine, thank you, it's quite glaringly obvious she's lying through her teeth. Her eyes are sunken in, her cheeks are lacking in their usual color, her smile is listless, and Neji knows quite well that the mattress in the guest bedroom is just as lumpy as his own.

(He makes a quick mental note to buy a new one and switch it with hers when she isn't looking. It would mean holding off on buying a briefcase, but his messenger bag could hold out a while longer if he does something to mend the fraying edges. More importantly, he doesn't want to see those bruises under her eyes anymore; the one on her cheek makes him angry enough.)

"Right," he says, surveying her through cautious eyes. What to say to a girl who's had almost everything she's known to be constant in her life stripped from her in less than a day? Neji casts about his mind, but the only things that surface are _You don't need those bastards anyway_ (and considering that is something that he often hears Tenten bark at her female friends after painful break-ups, it doesn't seem appropriate) and a long monologue extolling the brightness of youthful splendor and how young people burst with it at seams (but Lee hardly makes sense most of the time, so he can't see any good in saying any of that).

Or he could tell her the truth. He could tell her that it was the right thing to do, to shake off the chains of familial duty that would hold her to promises she hadn't wanted to make, but that her birth had made for her. He could sit next to her on the couch and put an arm around her and provide comfort and warmth as he says it.

"Good," he says instead. "I'll make breakfast."

_Maybe later_, he thinks, and calls himself a million different types of coward.


	7. connection

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #9: connection  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Neji  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** Same universe as "murmur", "2 am", "metaphor" and "tragedy" and "door" and "color". Jeez, this list is just gonna get longer and longer, isn't it? Dang it, whatever is written in this series will _always_ be in the universe unless stated otherwise, okay?

* * *

Neji and Hinata are unused to each other. They live together like astronauts, breathing from their own air supplies, afraid to bump shoulders or leave dirty dishes in the sink. They ask each other meaningless questions, like "Would you mind if I opened a window?" or "Does my typing bother you?" or "Can I sit here?"

There is a profound sense of disjointedness, a lack of the playful synergy they had shared as children. Now they are adults, and they do not know each other anymore.

* * *

Over the next few days, the silences between them grow from distinctly uncomfortable to merely hesitant.

She is not afraid to curl up on the couch next to him and read while he types away on his laptop. He opens the window when the radiator overheats the apartment without asking her. She washes his coffee mug when he forgets it on his desk.

* * *

Two weeks later, she is not afraid to talk to him about the books she is reading and he readily tells her about his research and his colleagues who might have become his friends when he wasn't paying attention. She brings him coffee nightly when he is busy scribbling chemical formulas and grading lab reports.

* * *

Three weeks after that, she shows him her manuscripts for the children's books she has been working on for years now. He raises an eyebrow, reads them, and asks her why she saw fit to make him a panda; she is comfortable enough to laugh at his confusion. He makes her breakfast everyday even though he prefers only coffee in the morning because he knows she likes her eggs scrambled and no one scrambles eggs like he can and because he enjoys watching the simple pleasure steal across her face when she eats them more than he would ever admit.

* * *

A month after that, she shops for them because Neji thinks grocery shopping is an inefficient waste of time. He gets her a CTA card and instructs her in the ways of riding public transportation and takes her to the Art Institute and walks around Hyde Park with her until he is sure she knows her way around. She is not afraid to take long showers in the evening and to ignore him when he knocks on the door and uses up all of his shampoo because she knows that when he complains he doesn't mean it.


	8. acid

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #25: acid  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Neji, Lee  
**Rating:** K+ for urges?  
**Notes:** Inspired by a real, live event in o-chem lab: I burned a hole right through the sleeve of my shirt with concentrated sulfuric acid, and I've got a ruined shirt and a lovely burn on my arm to forever commemorate those miserable five hours I spend getting high on bromine fumes. Oh, medical school, the things I do in pursuit of you.

* * *

_Lee_, Neji thinks for the umpteenth time that day, _is a complete moron_. This certainly isn't the first time the thought has passed Neji's mind, but it has been passing with a higher and higher frequency, and all because the green idiot has gotten it into his (doubtlessly empty) head that he, Neji, had feelings for Hinata.

"Preposterous," he says immediately after Lee's inquiry.

Lee's eyes go very round (rounder, if that were even possible) and he launches immediately into a charged speech about youthful energy, how Neji is wasting it while languishing in a lab all day, and how he should be out and about bursting into flames with its spirit or something. Neji stops listening and turns back to his recrystallization.

Or, rather, he _would _have stopped listening and stopped grinding his teeth and would have not broken three glass pipettes and not burned a hole clear though his shirt with concentrated sulfuric acid if Lee had not hit the nail on the head, so to speak.

Not that he would ever tell the gibbering green nincompoop, of course. It bothers Neji very, very much that Lee is right about something so very indecent.

And it bothers Neji, bothers him like nothing else, far, _far_ more than anything that Lee could rhapsodize about, that he could feel such—such—such _animalistic_ and _base_ urges towards his cousin. A cousin, his mind says snidely, who had come to him in a moment of extreme need and duress and who he should treat with the utmost respect. She is his _cousin_, for Christ's sake! His _roommate_!

And yet, he remembers, just the other day, stumbling upon her while she napped on his couch. His mind, traitor that it is, remembers every minuscule detail: the undulation of her hips, the delicate curl of her toes, the slant of her collarbone. He should have simply placed a blanket on her and gone on with his life, but no—no, he had stared at her for an undetermined amount of time and fought off the inexplicable urge to kiss her neck like some hormonal teenage primate, before catching himself in the shameful act.

It's even worse when she's freshly showered with damp hair that's clinging to bright pink cheeks and smelling like his shampoo. Much, _much_ worse.

It is enough to make Neji's ears burn red in shame.


	9. degrees

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #5: degrees  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Neji  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** "What do you do / With a BA in English? / What is my life going to be? / Four years of college / And plenty of knowledge / Have earned me this useless degree. / I can't pay the bills yet / 'Cause I have no skills yet. / The world is a big scary place! / But somehow I can't shake / The feeling I might make / A difference to the human race!" --Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, from Avenue Q (which is the best musical on Earth), "What Do You Do With a BA in English?" The sad part is, I'm totally an English major.

* * *

Hinata needs a job.

She also needs a handle on her life, because while continuing to mope around Neji's apartment and eating the food he graciously makes for her is a rather tempting prospect, she would rather stop freeloading. Neji is a graduate student, after all, and while he is a supremely competent one, he does not have an endless supply of money with which to support her dead weight.

So she needs a job. Moving out into an apartment of her own is a far away notion, but she should pay part of the rent, at least.

Hinata chews on her bottom lip as she surveys the brightly lit screen of her lap-top. Writing books is something she has wanted to do since she had been tiny and just waking up to the realization that there were people—real, live, breathing people who made the books that lined her room and protected her from the stifling quiet and taught her so many, many things, and the books did not spring, whole and perfect, into the world, and that they would have to be built, word by word, letter by letter, inky whorl by ink whorl. It is maddening to think that she is free to pursue it now, that she is free to think that her baccalaureate degree in creative writing—such a small, helpless thing, just like her—would be able to avail her of something, that she is free to use it and build her own world here with her own hands. It kind of makes her want to throw up and hide in the tiny room Neji has supplied her with, but then she would just be a burden on him, and that is enough to make her cheeks burn with shame.

And quite frankly, Hinata is sick of being a burden.

She types rapidly, clicking through page after page, scribbling information and occasionally sipping coffee that's long gone cold, and as she prints out appropriate forms and takes note of pertinent numbers, slowly, in her mind, a resolution begins to form. It's puny and shaky and probably destined to fail, but she has to try. She owes it to Neji, at least.

After a moment, she corrects the thought.

_No_, she thinks firmly, _I owe it to myself_.


	10. charm

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #33: charmed  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Jiraiya  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** A follow-up to the last bit in which Hinata wonders about getting published, and is henceforth the beginning of a short NaruHina arc in the most cliche way EVAR. (Don't kill me.) It's mostly written, ends in a fistfight, and will expand this universe to include Naruto (duh), Saskuke, Sai, Ino, and Sakura. It's set to be about 3-4 chapters, including this one. Also, wondering where the hell Shino, Kiba and Kurenai are? They'll show up eventually, I think.

* * *

"Well, Miss Hyuuga," says the absurdly large man seated behind the equally absurdly large mahogany desk, "your book has absolutely charmed me."

Hinata feels her cheeks go even warmer and hears the stutter in her voice before she can get the words out of her mouth. "I-I'm flattered, truly—"

Jiraiya waves her words away with a careless flourish of an enormous hand and a rogue grin. "You don't seem to get it, sweetheart. I see thousands of books come though this publishing house," he gesticulates widely, gesturing to the minimalist office that they're seated in. "I see crap and I see brilliance and I see everything in between. You, my dear, are brilliant, believe me. Very few authors get to sit where you're sitting, darling, very few are talented enough to be where you are." He winks at her, smiling a daring smile that makes her stomach dip a little even though the man is old enough to be her grandfather.

Hinata has never felt quite so small, but there is a strange sort of excitement burning in her chest. It had been four months of mailing her manuscript and waiting and tearing open rejection letter after rejection letter, until one crisp, blue morning—the sort of spring morning that had a promising sort of hint on the wind—when a letter had arrived, asking her to come into the Sannin Publishing House's Chicago office and meet with the chief editor—Jiraiya himself.

He looks even more wild and untamed in person and carries with him a sense of the exotic, a whiff of adventure, an air of the well-travelled that is at odds with his crisp suit and wire-rimmed glasses. She likes him despite herself.

"We want you," he says, "you and your book. I have a contract here"—Hinata's breath is lost somewhere in her lungs as he slides a slim black folder towards her—"for three books, and if they do well, we'll be looking to negotiate a deal for some more."

She reaches for it with trembling hands, and leafs through it and gracefully as she can. She's staring at the words, but for the first time in her life, they do not align themselves for her into neat sentences but dance along to strange patters.

"You'll want to think about it, of course," he says. "Have your agent look it over. You've got an agent, haven't you?"

_My cousin, _she thinks, remembering a late-night conversation when he had offered his services jokingly, saying in that half-sardonic, half-deadpan manner of his that she would need someone to stand up for her when the publishing company tried to steal the books from right underneath her nose. She would take him up on it, she decides. Or, at least, for now, she would pretend. "I—I do."

"Good. I'll get in touch with him—him?—him soon. Look over the contract, and we'll go over whatever changes you want to make together."

She stumbles out of the office a half-hour later, winded and exhilarated and more dumbfounded than she has ever been in her life. She walks blindly, turning the last hour's happenings over and over in her mind—_her_ _book_! _Published_! In _print_! Just wait until she tells Neji, and he'd smile his small, true smile at her and raise his eyebrows and—when she dashes right into an orange and blond blur and finds herself on the floor.


	11. bright

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #33: bright  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Naruto  
**Rating:** T  
**Notes:** Part 2 of the NaruHina arc. Yay.

* * *

"Damn!" says a voice, and once she opens her eyes, they slam into a pair of bright, bright blue ones, set in a tanned face framed with a mop of golden hair. "Shit, I really didn't mean to do that! Oh, man, you're not hurt, are you?"

"N-no," she stammers, managing to tear her gaze away from his face before he has cause to think of her as some depraved loon. "I'm all right. You didn't hurt me."

"Oh, good!" he says, obviously relived, and gives her a grin that turns his eyes into bright blue crescents and stretches his cheeks into half-moons. Hinata's heart flops over in her chest. "Hey, lemme treat you to coffee as an apology."

If Hinata had been herself—if she had not just been offered a book deal and given a lifetime's worth of dreams on a silver platter—she would have fled the scene, blushing frantically and trying to calm the mad stutters of her heart, but she does not. She feels impossibly, irrevocably invincible, so, instead, she rights herself, clutches her skirt, and says, "Thank you. Coffee would be lovely."

He gives her his wide grin again as he helps her up. Hinata hopes against hope that her palm isn't _too_ sweaty.

"Brilliant! You have time, right? I was only going up to find that old pervert anyway, it's not important. Anyway, you new? I don't think I've seen you around the building before…"

He can talk a mile a minute and his smile and his eyes remind her of endless skies and gusting winds. He is a frenetic with energy: it crackles like sparks off his skin and onto hers, is evident in the wide gestures of his hands and the snap of his step, in the sharp rhythm of his words and the whoosh of his breath. He is open and exuberant, drunk with life and thoughtlessly wordy and everything that Hinata has wanted to be but has never found the courage to become.

And as she slowly sips the coffee he buys her and sits across from him in a trendy bistro, she finds herself falling in—well, not love, perhaps, not yet.

But something dangerously close.


	12. crumble

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #22: crumble  
**Characters/Pairings:** Neji, Hinata, Naruto  
**Rating:** K  
**Notes:** In which Neji is not very happy.

* * *

Neji has been planning the evening ever since Hinata had first sent out her manuscript.

The morning that Hinata receives a summons to the main office of the Sanin Publishing house, he knows her chance has come. So he wastes no time: he makes reservations and buys two tickets to _The Damnation of Faust _because Hinata had said that she would like to see it—a celebratory evening, of sorts, and certainly not a date. (Not, he says again, more firmly, not, not, not a date.)

He places the tickets in his desk and waits for Hinata to come home, whiling the time away by grading lab reports and glancing at the clock much more than he is accustomed.

She does come home, happy and flushed and more beautiful than ever, but, apparently, with a boyfriend. She regales him with her story of the afternoon: She talks of her book deal ("Can you believe it? Me! Published!") with wide eyes and hushed tones, as though she can scarcely believe it; he smiles at this.

He has trouble smiling genuinely when she tells him about the man she met, though. An entirely new sort of expression steals over her face, complete with half-smiles and vividly pink cheeks and perfect teeth that sink into damnably red lips as she says, "I think I like him." Her eyes genuflect to the side, sweeping over the low coffee table and finally resting somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. "R-really like him, I mean."

There is a distinct roaring in his ears as his plans crumble. He listens and nods and encourages woodenly, but she is too wrapped up in this Naruto to take notice.

He cancels the reservations and the tickets gather dust in his desk.

She is happy, he knows, as he watches her sweep out for her dates and return looking absent-minded and humming songs to herself.

She is happy, and he will have to make do with that.


	13. turpentine kisses and mistaken blows

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #44: turpentine kisses and mistaken blows  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Naruto, Sasuke, Ino, Sakura, and Sai  
**Rating:** T  
**Notes:** I love Sai. Also, promised fist-fight, wahoo! (Um, and SakuSai and SasuNaru.) The next bit (or two bits) should conclude this mess.

* * *

Hinata suggests an airy café for their third date, and Naruto, in typical sunny Naruto fashion, agrees enthusiastically.

"I'm up for anything," he tells her, grinning at her conspiratorially, a grin that makes Hinata feel like it's just him and her on their secret team against the world. Her heart skips another beat.

She thinks that night as she is laying out clothes for their foray the next day, sometimes, when she is talking to him, there is a light in his eyes that blinks out, only slightly, only for a second, and he looks beyond her, through her, at something else, something distant, and in that second, there is longing, naked and needy, on his face. By the time she notices, his attention has snapped back to her and he's raptly listening again. Hinata is not fooled: Naruto is not the loud simpleton he pretends to be. There are layers inside of him, but he protects them with weapons—bright smiles and loud laughter—and Hinata has no experience with those.

So Hinata says nothing. She has been raised with whispers and shame as her bedmates and knows all about secret desires.

When Hinata enters the café the next day the appointed time, everything seems fine: he is as solid and cheerful as ever, and his eyes look at nothing but her. Still, she thinks, it is a precarious balance—whose face does he superimpose on her own in those fleeting moments?

And as she is wondering, a troop of people burst through the door, and suddenly, Naruto has bolted to his feet, eyes wide.

"What--?" she begins, but before she knows what is going on, a slim, black-haired man has flown across the room and punched Naruto across the face.

_

* * *

_

"So it's official?" Ino whispers to Sakura as both girls stand in the hallway leading to Sakura's tiny galley kitchen. "He's _officially_ out of the closet?"

"I—I _think_ so," Sakura mutters back, staring at Sasuke brood in her living room with furrowed brows. "He didn't say anything about it but all he's been doing is asking obsessively about Naruto since he got here."

"Wasn't it just a passing phase? I mean, they went to an all-boys boarding school. _Everyone's_ gay at all-boys boarding schools. Naruto got over it."

Sakura still looks concerned, worrying at her bottom lip and tugging on a forelock of her hair. "Sasuke's going to _kill_ Naruto when he finds out that he's dating some chick."

"Kill him _dead_," Ino agrees. "I think it's best not to let him know. As in, ever."

Sakura nods her assent. "It'll save that poor moron's life."

Sai, standing behind them in the kitchen and eavesdropping on the whispered conversation, decides that he is decidedly unhappy about the situation. He doesn't like it when his girlfriend frets and worries over other men, but he's got a special sort of dislike for Sasuke. Sakura claims she's over it now, but she had spent an inordinate amount of years pining after the dark, brooding young man after all.

Which makes Sai feel distinctly uncomfortable about having Sasuke sulk around Sakura's apartment.

Time to get things moving, then.

He sidles into the living room, takes a seat across the Uchiha heir, and smiles his brightest, fakest smile.

Sasuke is not amused, and the glare pinning Sai to his chair makes that manifest.

No matter. Sai is not out to win any popularity contests. He just wants this melodramatic sulk-fest out of his girlfriend's apartment.

* * *

Yesterday, Sakura could have counted the times she has been this scared on one hand, but now it will take two.

"_Fuck_," she hisses as Sasuke makes yet another wild left turn and avoids an on-coming car by millimeters. She should yell something, scream something, but all she can do now is fight to catch her breath and hope that she hadn't done something so irredeemably wrong that God would send her to hell, because, with the way Sasuke is driving, she probably will not survive this trip.

"Sasuke!" Ino screams from the back seat where she is clutching on to Sai—who is looking even more ashen than usual—"what the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

_No_, Sakura corrects her silently through gritted teeth. _What the hell are _we_ doing in this car?_

It had been Sai, Sai and his stupid perpetual smile, who had told Sasuke that no, he didn't know where Naruto was living, but he _did_ know that he was dating some pretty young thing and they should be at such-and-such café now. Sakura had dashed into the room one second too late to pounce on the moron, but had seen Sasuke's mouth tighten nearly imperceptibly and witnessed his lunge for his car keys and felt her stomach do summersaults worthy of the Olympic Games.

They had all tumbled into the car—she and Ino because they had enough experience with these matters to know that to allow Sasuke to go alone would be tantamount to being complicit accessories in Naruto's murder and Sai because he was Sai—but had made the mistake allowing Sasuke to drive because Sasuke is _livid, _.

That scares her even more than his driving.

Sakura swallows bile. Sai is going die, and, if she lives long enough, she will make _sure_ it will be in the most painful way imaginable.

* * *

Hinata backs away from the flying fists and the tumbling glassware and splintering tables with a wildly pounding heart and hanging jaw.

What had just _happened_? Her mind gallops to catch up with the situation, but can make no sense of it: why were Naruto and the stranger boring a hole in the center of the café? The pair throws punches and kicks with utter abandon and she can make out Naruto's voice demanding answers—"What the fuck are you doing, _bastard_?"—and the stranger's answering grunts.

And then her heart freezes because she catches a glimpse of the stranger's face. The features, contorted in now rage rearrange themselves and fit themselves in another instance in her mind; the aquiline nose, the thin lips, the black eyes, all belonging to Sasuke Uchiha.

The man her father had intended for her to marry.

Naruto takes a vicious punch. Her stomach turns in on itself and suddenly Hinata wants to throw up.

* * *

Although the car ride may have been a bit frightening, Sai is quite pleased with the scene he is partially responsible for causing, and especially pleased with the way Sakura and Ino are clutching their faces in abject horror. He's sure that Sakura will not be talking to him for another week—perhaps two—but he's already worked out a game-plan to mollify her. It involves lots of flowers, a painting of questionable nature, and promises of lots of sex. Sai is confident it will work.

More importantly, however, she will surely be so mad at Sasuke for laying waste to in innocent café that she will not talk to him for a _month_, at the very least.

He grins to himself. It's a fair trade-off.

He spies the girl that is unfortunate enough to have gotten herself involved with Naruto. She is a pretty thing in a plain, understated way, and Sai imagines that she would make an interesting subject. A study in blushes, he surmises. The color washing across her cheeks and the light slanting though her hair are quite fetching.

He watches as the red abruptly drains from her face as the expression on it morphs from confused-with-an-edge-of-terror to utterly mortified and she covers her mouth with her hands. How curious.

He sidles over and smiles his most comforting smile at her. "Frightening, isn't it?"

She turns her wide eyes on him. (He makes up his mind to paint her: he's never seen eyes so light and striking, and his hands already itch for a brush.) "N-no!" she gasps, her hands wringing together. "I forgot, I swear, I forgot! I should have called or wrote or something—oh, I don't know what to do!"

Sai frowns. He doesn't like her features arranged in that expression; it contorts the image he has superimposed on the canvas in his mind. "I afraid I don't understand."

Tears gather in her enormous eyes. He doesn't like this either. Eyes like those must be unclouded.

"I-it's my _fault_!" she wails, getting more distressed by the second. "I was supposed to marry him and now he's here hitting my date—"

Sai is unsure of what this girl is trying to say, but he _is_ quite sure that the brouhaha ensuing in the middle of the café—oh, how quaint, the proprietor is finally threatening to call the police—is the result of Sasuke's repressed desires and his prolonged and uselessly melodramatic struggle with his sexuality. Well. He doesn't want this girl's face to crumple any more than it has, so he puts two fingers in his mouth and blows.

The ensuing whistle is shrill enough to halt even the morons destroying a perfectly fine café: they stop in mid-blow to stare at the source of the noise. Sai is proud of it despite himself, and tells the girl with a smile, "The floor is yours."

She is not stupid and jumps at the chance. "I-I'm so sorry!" she cries.

"No, Hinata, it's not your—" Naruto starts, but she cuts him off.

"I'm sure you d-don't remember me, Sasuke," she says, more steady but still clearly on the verge of tears. Sai is rather impressed. "I'm Hinata Hyuuga. I was," she swallows, "supposed to marry you."

Everyone in the shop stares at the unfolding drama. Ino lets out a low whistle.

The girl—Hinata, Sai tells himself—wilts under the stares, but continues. "I refused a-ages ago, but I didn't t-t-tell you myself. I'm—I f-forgot, I swear! I m-meant to, b-but--but there was--I mean, I'm n-not going to marry you! So, please, don't hit Naruto anymore!" Color floods her cheeks as she turns and rushes out the door.

Before anyone can move, she is lost to the rush outside.

"Well, shit," Sakura says after a beat of silence.

Sai cannot help but agree.


	14. hunger

**Title:** Still I Rise -- #35: hunger  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Neji  
**Rating: **K, rather firmly.  
Notes: My apologies for kind-of abandoning this story-thing for so long. I mean, school has been quite thoroughly ghastly these past few weeks and I'd gotten a new laptop for my birthday, so I had salvage my fics, among other important things, off of my old wreck of a hard drive before I could even think of moving on with this. I'll probably be writing things as stress relief, so expect things to be updated sporadically. Um. Reviews would be mightily appreciated.

Also, a slight poll, given as I haven't actually written the next part: When the inevitable Naruto/Sasuke/Hinata confrontation takes place, whose perspective would you like to read it from--Hinata, Naruto, or Sasuke? All three? I don't really know which way it will swing--as I tend to write by ear and don't ever really plan ahead in detail--but hearing from you all would be nice. Happy reading!

* * *

Hinata is inordinately glad that Neji is not at home when she stumbles into the apartment and readily bursts into very noisy tears in the foyer. She sinks into a crouch and cries into her brown suede purse. It is partly shock, partly anger, and mostly shame that cause her to spout tears like their leaky kitchen faucet. She is rattled enough to let them go.

There is no one here to tell her to smother them, no father who would clamp a hand on her shoulder and tell her, in steely, angry tones, to wipe her nose, to stop being a nuisance.

So she cries and cries and cries, because she could have taught herself to love Naruto. She could have slept peacefully in his arms and smiled at him in the mornings and run her hands through his hair.

She will not be able to do that now. What man in his right mind would want a woman who caused an ex-fiancé of hers to nearly beat him to death. It's over between them now. She feels this like the thudding finality of shutting her father's study door behind her.

* * *

She has the foresight to be out of sight and in bed when Neji makes his way home, though it is barely early evening. She hears the creak of the closet door and the clink of the hanger as he hangs his coat, the steady thumping of his feet as he makes his way into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

He pauses at her door. Will he knock? She hopes against hope that he'll think better of it. Hinata needs time to bandage and dress and bind her pride so that it will not appear so pathetic and fragile and frayed. There is no way she can face him now, not with her blotchy face and red eyes.

Neji has sharp eyes. Even tomorrow morning, when she can be sure to look relatively normal, he will notice something is wrong. He will not ask, but he will worry, and she does not want him to worry, more than anything, not when he has been so kind.

So she needs time to gather whatever molecules of dignity she has left, time to worry and sort and fashion a mask with which she can face his questions.

The shadows of Neji's feet move past her door. She sighs and burrows into her sheets. She is asleep before she knows it.

* * *

Hinata tip-toes out of her room at half-passed three that night. Hunger has conquered even shame: she really, really needs something to eat. She makes sure to step lightly—Neji is a notoriously light sleeper and the last thing she needs is for him to worry about her creeping about.

She needn't have bothered, as he is reading on the couch and inadvertently looks up at her emergence. His gaze zeroes in on her with unerring accuracy, and sees all the offending things she did not want him to see: the red eyes, the droop to her mouth, the trembling of her legs. He simply studies her over the rims of his reading glasses before unfolding himself from the couch and ambling past her into the kitchen.

"N-Neji," she says, clutching the hem of her nightshirt. "I—I'm sorry I slept through dinner tonight."

He shrugs, his back to he while he rummages about in the fridge. "It's fine." He straightens with an armful of zuccini, tomatoes and onions. He shuts the fridge door with his heel and drops his loot into a bowl.

A beat of silence passes, in which Hinata stares in confusion as Neji washes vegetables, fishes a bag of pasta out of the pantry, and sets both a pasta pan and frying pan on the stove.

"What are you doing?"

He casts her a glance over his shoulder. "Cooking."

She presses her lips together once before asking, "I can tell, but _why_ are you cooking?"

This time, he does not turn around. "I haven't eaten yet, and neither have you. No one does carry-out this late."

Inexplicably, the urge to cry wells up in her throat, but this time, she decides not to wallow in self-pity. "Why?" asks instead, voice only slightly husky. "Why didn't you eat dinner when you usually do?"

"I wasn't hungry." He turns around this time to frown at her disapprovingly over his shoulder. "Now we're both hungry, so are you planning on just standing there and letting me do all the work?"

She wipes her eyes quickly. _So kind, Neji, you're so kind._ She doesn't say this out loud, though, just like she doesn't point out that it is nearly four in the morning, and he has to be up by nine, and that he surely knows that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. He does her the courtesy of not asking, and, in his quiet, extraordinarily kind way, takes to sheltering her when she needs it. He will not pry, but will stand guard at her door and give her a cushion of silent comfort.

"Tell me what to do," she says as she deftly ties her hair back and steps up to the counter.

Just for tonight, she thinks, just for tonight, she will take advantage of his kindness. She will lean on him and let him spoil her.

_Just_, she thinks again, as she peels tomatoes and chops onions, _for tonight, I will pretend that I am worth this and surely that will not be so terrible._


	15. reciprocity

**Title:** Still I Rise - #36: reciprocity  
**Characters/Pairings:** Hinata, Naruto/Sasuke  
**Rating:** Pretty standard T, for two battered boys making out and Naruto's omnipresent dirty mouth.  
**Notes:** This chapter's been re-written three times, sat on for a few months, and then re-written again. I kind of hate it, but it's obviously not cooperating with me. I hope you enjoy it, though!

* * *

"You two," Sakura grinds out between her teeth while bandaging Sasuke's bruised and bleeding knuckles, "are _complete_ morons."

"But Sakura—" Naruto starts, half plaintive, half biting mad, "_he_ started—"

"Don't you _start_ with me," she snarls, and if she wraps the gauze too tightly around Sasuke's idiot fist, it's no fault of hers. "Do you have any idea what you did? Start a freaking brawl in the middle of a Lincoln Park café, that's what! Demolished it! You both had better thank your lucky stars I was willing to bail you out of jail after that. You _owe_ me." She starts to stomp around her living room, picking up bits and pieces of her first aid kit, muttering all the while.

"Technically," Sasuke intones, his voice flat, "it was still standing when we left."

Naruto snorts, but keeps his mouth shut.

Sakura replaces all the paraphernalia in her oft-abused kit, snaps it shut with a sharp _click_, and surveys them under drawn eyebrows. They're sitting at opposite ends of her couch, both bandaged and bruised and sporting spectacular split lips. Naruto's still wound tight, arms crossed tightly over his chest, a muscle leaping in his jaw; Sasuke is, as always, the very picture of supercilious boredom, but there's tension in his shoulders and bleakness in his eyes. Neither of them has looked at each other.

Sakura takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. _Idiots. Morons. Emotionally constipated loons. How hard is it to say, "Kiss me, you fool!" and move on with life? _

"What I'm going to do," she says, slowly and dangerously, "goes against every single bit of my better judgment. I'm going to go out for about half-an-hour. I'm going to leave you two Neanderthals alone. I _expect_ you two to talk to each other. I _expect_ you two to work out your various issues with each other. And," she glowers, and is satisfied to note that they both sit up a little straighter when they hear the threat in her voice, "I _expect_ to find my furniture to be _exactly_ as it is right now."

She stoops to gather her purse and pull on her shoes.

"You're not going to kill Sai, are you?" Naruto asks hesitantly. "I mean, the guy's creepy, but I like him, so—"

"No," she sighs. "Killing Sai would be superfluous. You two would have exploded into bloodshed at some point or another anyway." She turns to give them one last malevolent look. "Don't break anything, and you two _better_ be BFFs for life when I get back."

She slams the door behind her and walks off in search of her boyfriend and a stiff drink.

* * *

The silence Sakura leaves behind is as awkward as it is deafening, and surrounded by it, Sasuke panics. What can he say? What can he do? Everything has gone so, so wrong. He hasn't seen Naruto in years, and of course, the first thing he does is plant his fist in his face—

And then, Naruto exhales, slow and sure, and says, almost conversationally, "How you been, man?"

The utter banality of the question throws Sasuke off. He blinks at Naruto—_we just beat the life out of each other at my behest and with no provocation that you could possibly know of_, _but I'm fine_, _thanks_ seems a bit inane—and says, instead, "How do you think I am?" Bastard had a mean right hook, and Sauke's face is aching.

Naruto just shrugs. "I dunno. You show up after four years and punch me in the face, and I gather that's not something you wanna talk about because you're more repressed than the fucking vampire dude my mom keeps ranting about. So, how _have_ you been?"

Sasuke's nostrils flare, but he wonders how to answer the question all the same. How _has_ he been the last four years? How will he find words to describe empty dorm rooms and countless classes, solitary meals and the utter greyness that's pervaded his life? Sasuke is not good with words, so he shrugs. "More of the same. Not bad."

The silence stretches, and then Naruto, who is not good with silences, just like Sasuke is not good with words, exhales again, rubs a hand over his shaggy mop of yellow hair, and says, "Okay, I'll bite. There a reason you developed an unreasonable urge to get your ass kicked?"

Sasuke growls. This is not how he pictured the conversation. This is not how he wanted this conversation. This is not how he rehearsed this conversation. But Naruto is nothing if not aggressive and rude, so nothing has changed, not really, and that's heartening. "Get your facts straight, pansy. I kicked _your_ ass."

Naruto snorts. "Oh, you tickle my stamen when you talk like that, boyfriend—" and then says, quickly, noting the rising color in Sasuke's cheeks and remembering Sakura's glower—"Wanna explain about being engaged to my date?"

Oh, he'd forgotten about that. A different worry begins gnawing at Sasuke's stomach, but he refuses to think about it. "My parents have been trying to get me engaged to some heiress or another since birth. This one turned me down months ago."

Naruto smirks. "Goes to show you she has good taste."

"Can it, moron."

"Make me, bastard. So, back to the subject at hand—"

Suddenly, Sasuke can't stand it, not anymore. How can he explain this to Naruto? Naruto, who has such an intuitive grasp on things, to Naruto, who only has to flash a wide, shit-eating grin to make Sasuke want to punch him and kiss him at the same time? Naruto, who may have forgotten him and moved on and gone on to love another, with that same openhearted, bright blue love that he'd once given to Sasuke?

So Sasuke blurts, "I want—"

Naruto zeroes in on him with unerring accuracy. _Yes_, Sasuke thinks, _he's always known me best_. "What _do_ you want, bastard?"

"I want—" he starts again, because there are words, but they're fluttering beyond his grasp, and his tongue is thick in his mouth, and anything that he says now will come out interminably, horribly wrong. So Sasuke does what could go one of two ways: it will either solve all of his problems, or enrage Naruto such that he'll get punched in the face. Again.

He shoves his mouth against Naruto's. The contact is harsh and desperate and full of yearning too anguished to put into words; one of his hands alights on the back to Naruto's neck and the other grips the blond's bicep so tightly, his fingers are going numb. None of that matters, though, because Naruto has gone utterly still. Panic beings to shudder to life in Sasuke's mind-he's never been the one to initiate kisses: Naruto, Naruto and his wide, wide eyes and his all-encompassing smile and his large, rough hands and his sweat-slicked back, would always be the one who would kiss first, caress first, touch first. _Respond_, Sasuke wants to beg_, please, Naruto. I've never done this before and I don't know how._

Tension vibrates in the air for a few moments when blazing blue eyes bore into his, but it melts into—not bliss, not joy—but something marvelously close—when with a hoarse, animalistic sound, Naruto opens his mouth against his. Naruto's arms are around Sasuke now; he vaguely feels a hand cradle the back of his head and one slip under his shirt to paw at his back, but those sensations are infinitely insignificant compared to the wet warmth of Naruto's tongue in his mouth, Naruto's leg between his own, and the knowledge that Naruto has missed this—whatever this searing, beguiling, monstrous, nameless thing between them is—as much as he has.

And just as suddenly, Naruto has shoved him an arm's length away. Sasuke almost whimpers—almost—and registers that Naruto is breathing just as fast as he is. There is some satisfaction in that.

"No," Naruto growls, "not until we apologize to Hinata."

The satisfaction is gone, replaced by a desire to, once again, slug Naruto across the face.

Still, there is some measure of understanding now sparking between both of them, in the solemn, deliberate way Naruto looks him over.

"We'll talk about—" he waves his hand in the air, a vague, airy motion, "well, whatever it is that you want, what I want, when this is done." Naruto gets up, groaning as he stretches overtaxed muscles. He turns, looks at Sasuke over his shoulder, and grins. Sasuke feels his heart kick. "Damn, bastard," he says, his tone laughing now, "haven't had a fight like that in a good long while. We need to do it again sometime. I'll call you in a couple days."

And then, he walks out the door, leaving Sasuke, again, pondering the vagaries of human nature in general and Naruto's moods in particular. There is rhyme and reason to them, and Sasuke will learn that again.

He leans back against the couch, and closes his eyes.

Naruto said he would call.

There's hope.

* * *

Hinata gets a call three days after the fiasco in the café. The conversation is short and awkward, which is a new thing—she has never felt awkward with Naruto before. _Though_, she muses with a half-smile, _getting your date beat to a pulp before your very eyes by your ex-fiancé probably has that effect on most relationships_.

She takes a huge bite out her brownie (double chocolate, because while her hips certainly don't deserve that sort of abuse, she needs all the endorphins she can wring out of her brain) and steels her nerves for the upcoming meeting: Naruto's coming over tomorrow, and he's bringing Sasuke, and they're going to apologize.

"_We promise to behave,"_ Naruto has said, voice tinny in her ear_. "No fist-fights this time."_

Hinata isn't afraid of fistfights (well, maybe a little) but of other sorts of fights, the sort that cloud out words and leave smarting burns behind. She swallows two sleeping pills that night. She cringes a little bit as she does it, but she doesn't want to be up thinking, not tonight.

* * *

Naruto usually prides himself on having thick skin: insults usually bounce off of him harmlessly, and he's gotten into more than his fair share of sticky situations—drug dealers in Cambodia, that was fun, and then wandering into warring clan territory over in Pakistan, that he's not likely to forget-over the last few years, so he can comport himself with ease in virtually any circumstance he could possibly find himself in.

Or so he liked to think. Nothing—not having a gun pointed at his head, or being chased down city catacombs by irate army officers—compared to the discomfort rolling through his system in this tiny, well-ordered living room.

He looks over Hinata again—Hinata who probably isn't his girlfriend anymore. He smiles ruefully; she is too nice to drop the bomb on him. His gaze travels over her bowed head and the small hands clenched around her teacup. _Damn_, he thinks, and not for the first time. _And we never even got to make out_.

In any case, Sasuke, with his exaggerated antisocial tendencies, would be of no help. He's already proven it, by glaring hard enough at Hinata to make her flinch, grunting out an apology, and then sullenly staring at his tea for the past ten minutes. And as much as Naruto would like to throttle the bastard and maybe toss him out a window for making an already difficult encounter even more awkward, he's promised that they wouldn't be plowing fists into each other's faces.

Well, not _this_ time, anyway.

So Naruto does the next best thing he can think of. It will probably make Sasuke's panties bunch up something awful and there'll probably be hell to pay later—because, no matter what the bastard thinks of himself, Naruto knows that Sasuke is a creature of habit, and a prissy Sasuke was a pain in the ass to deal with—he does it anyway.

"Hey, bastard," he says, tapping Sasuke's shoulder. "Wanna go wait in your car? So Hinata and I can talk. Can't really talk with you glaring holes in the table."

Maybe the last bit was a low blow, but Sasuke's skin is nearly as thick as Naruto's, and the point really needed to be driven home.

But Sasuke's always been a pretty boy, and even now, when he turns and looks at Naruto, a world of hurt and anger clouding thise black, beautiful eyes and a pout on those lips, Naruto can't help but want to kiss him and lick that frown off.

Damn. _Definitely time to end things with Hinata_. So he jerks his head towards the door, and says, "Go on. I'll see you downstairs in a few."

Sasuke's eye twitches—and Naruto nearly grins, because Sasuke's always been this neurotic, twitchy mess, and it's _so_ cute—but he gets up, nods at Hinata and stalks out the door with minimal drama. And it might be his imagination, but Hinata seems to deflate as soon as the door closes.

"First off, let me put something on the table now," Naruto blurts, because she's opened her mouth to say something, and she has this awful stricken expression on her face so she's obviously twisted this ridiculous situation to somehow be _her_ fault, "This isn't your fault, Hinata, now way, no how."

She shuts her mouth with a snap, and Naruto takes that as a positive sign to start rambling. "See, Sasuke and I go back, like, way back, dawn of time back. Well, maybe not that far, but like, freshman year of high school. Edgewook Academy. Like, nine years now. So, he's always been this jerkface priss—good for you on turning him down by the way—and, would you believe it, we were roommates. Lemme tell you, it was hell that first year, because he'd always be up in my face about by shit being all over the floor, and what the hell man, no one's as neat as Sasuke is, it's unnatural. _Dude irons his underwear_."

His monologue has the intended effect, and Hinata starts smiling.

"It go better, and man, we pulled some great pranks back then, something about an elephant and a locally built nuclear reactor, but see, things got a bit—messy—in junior year. Have I ever told you I'm bisexual?"

Hinata's eyes widen a fraction, but she just shakes her head no.

"Yeah, that's the sort of thing that sneaks up on a guy. Spend your adolescence watching good old-fashioned heterosexual porn, and then bam, you start thinking that your roommate is kinda hot." He grimaces. "It's hell for your self-image, you know, when you spend your time charming the ladies out of their panties."

Hinata is smiling almost widely now. Naruto's gut stops clenching. "I don't think you had all that much trouble with it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well," she says, cocking her head to the side, and suddenly, Naruto finds that he really likes the playful tilt of her lips. He realizes suddenly that they'll do much better as friends, if only because they're people-pleasers, both of them, and he's spent the last few weeks chattering to impress her and she's spent them absorbing that chatter to please him. It's a nasty combination.

But she's still grinning and talking, and Naruto wonders why she didn't do that while they were dating, and then he thinks, _well, duh, pressure of a new romantic relationship, stupid_. "You're far too well-adjusted to stuff your sexuality into a neatly defined box. I think you would have found that attraction, well, a bit absurd, but still, a healthy thing."

He smiles widely at her. Smart girl. "I blame my mom for that, by the way. Marvelous woman, but she's more socially liberal than your average garden-variety commie. So, anyway, we went out for a year, and then he went to college and I went to college, and that was it."

He can tell Hinata knows there's more to the story, but it's a story he doesn't like to think of too much, so he doesn't say anymore about it. "Until now, when he tried to kill you. I'm guessing there are some lingering feelings, on…both your parts?"

He shrugs. "Yeah. We never really ended it like, definitively, you know? It was just, uh, lots of existential angst on his part and lots of anger on mine."

And, to his surprise, she smiles and shakes her head ruefully. "I guess I should have known." She stands and begins placing used teacups on the tray. Her hands are steady, he notes, but she should have known? What does that mean?

"I don't understand."

She straightens and smiles at him brilliantly, and for an awful moment, Naruto wants desperately to spare her pain by not doing this, but he knows he really shouldn't. He's already in the midst of a break-up scene—a really well choreographed and surprisingly histrionics-free scene given that he's told her he's leaving her for a _man_—and it's best not to send out mixed messages, especially since he has no plans of carrying on with her.

"I mean," she says, as she carries the loaded tray into the kitchen, and he follows her, "that I've always kind of—well, known, I suppose, that you were pining away for someone."

Either the woman can read minds or she's bullshitting him. "How?"

She begins to wash the dishes, with slow careful movements. "You didn't make it obvious or anything. It was just, I don't know, moments, I guess, when you would be a million miles away, and you'd have such an—such an _inscrutable_ expression on your face. You're not inscrutable, Naruto, so I knew something was going on here, and it obviously wasn't you fantasizing about _me_. It's kind of nice to know what all that was about now."

"Wait a minute," he says, and takes a hold of her shoulders to turn her around. He lifts her chin with one finger and makes it a point to make eye contact. This is important. "You're telling me that you knew—you _knew_—that I was in love with some other person and still decided to give it a go with me?"

She shrugs helplessly.

"Okay," he says, "okay, you gotta listen to me on this. I may be the worst person to get relationship advice from, but, damn, woman, you are amazing. I'm still wondering why the hell I didn't sex you up when I had the chance, and I'm telling you, you can't sell yourself short like that. It's stupid. You deserve better."

She blinks at him.

"I don't know what's happened to you to make you think that you don't deserve one million percent of a man's undivided attention, but I'm telling you _right now_—it's all bullshit."

She nods, a small, embarrassed nod. Her throat works, and but she doesn't say anything. Naruto doesn't want her to; it's enough of she thinks about it. He kisses her forehead, and grins at her. "Cheer up, Hinata. You're brilliant, and I wish it had worked out between us."

She seems gladdened by the shift in conversation. "I do, too."

"Can we still be friends?" he asks cheekily, "which isn't to say I won't fantasize about you from time to time, I'll just do it, you know, discreetly."

She smacks him in the arm with a soapy sponge. "Don't do that. Mr. Uchiha will try to break you nose again."

"Hey, hey, hey. I'll have you know, that bastard's been trying to break my nose since he found moldy pizza in his sock drawer way back when. He's never succeeded, but he's a pansy that way."

She giggles, and they banter, and Naruto finally relaxes through-and-through. Hinata's good people, he thinks, and they make plans to meet up with some of his friends for drinks later in the week—she's slightly horrified, of course, but he talks her into it, because Sakura and Ino have been chomping at the bit to meet her—and leaves with a smile on his face.


End file.
